Synopsis: Anthologist Hess (Jones)
is stabbed by an ancient ritual dagger by his suicidal assistant George Meda (Gunn). The dagger transforms Hess into a
vampire, dependant on human blood for sustenance. Meda's wife Ganja (Clark) appears to try and find him only
to start a romance with Hess, also leading to her learning of his vampirism.

It feels questionable to call Ganja and Hess a Blaxploitation film. Blaxploitation
has always meant to me rambunctious genre movies with primarily African
American casts, potentially great movies with great scores but action packed
and fast paced films to be grinded through film projectors. An introspective
horror movie that's heavily into symbolism, even if its erotic and has violent,
really strays outside this sub-genre template immensely. The late Bill Gunn took advantage of what might've
been a dull job for him, turning a vampire movie he was offered into an
introspective character piece. It has sex and blood, but in its uncut form the
lengthy dialogue sequences and introspective tone is closer to a John Cassavetes film, not a conventionally
"fun" movie about thrills and chills. The emphasis on a naturalistic
and realistic take on the vampire myth is significant in contrast to other
vampire films from the period. This is far before the deconstructions of the
vampire myth becoming popular, in an era when the Hammer horror films were still being made and, despite Ganja & Hess being an incredibly
sensual movie, almost psychedelic softcore by the likes of Jean Rollin or Jess Franco
coming from Europe. In vast contrast to the classical tradition or the
psychedelic imbued eroticism, you have Hess living an ordinary life that is yet
dictated by a form of drug addiction, where he must go into a doctor's clinic
and distract people to steal blood bags, only to end up having to stalk people
and matter-of-factly kill them to drink their blood, no fangs but a messy
aftermath in every case despite the moderate use of blood.

From https://kultguyskeep.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/ganja-hess-1.jpg?w=604

In lieu of a clear theme, instead the film is
a series of textures are interlaced over this premise especially in the
contrast of African mythology against Christianity. The mythology is connected
in places with the blood drinking and in intense sequences, but the reoccurring
image of a Queen marching through the plains (played by Mabel King) is far too serene for the connotations of vampirism to
seem like proper similarities, feeling intentionally complicated. The Christian
virtues depicted, in the scenes when Hess' chauffeur Luther Williams is in his
other career as a priest at a local church, never becomes sanctimonious but far
more justifiably heavenly, very grounded and more so when it is the source of
the salvation at the end of the film for Hess himself without any damnation of
his soul for the curse he has. The result is something which you rarely see in
horror films, which have a nasty tendency to depict African culture as a
version of voodoo and witchdoctors which has nothing to do with the real
version of them but encourages racial stereotypes, a far more balanced and
complicated take on the subject. Not surprisingly an African-American
director-writer with an entirely black central cast is not going to portray
their cultural heritage as a two dimensional concept, as Gunn neither treats Christianity as a cheap way form of good, preferring
to tackle either with the level of complexity that you have to wait until Abel Ferrara'sThe Addiction (1995) for a similar film that uses the vampire trope
for such philosophising.

From http://static1.squarespace.com/static/533f31dfe4b0e432fe867300/t/54d2512fe4b0c823a47447b3/1423069494177/Ganja+%26+Hess+04

What's interesting though is that
because of the circumstances of the film being produced with the expectation of
a vampire film, Gunn using his
creative control to change the premise offered to him but still making a genre
film when its all said and done, this is also a film that has the same
grubbiness of many hidden gems of American horror cinema of this period. A flexibility,
as a result of the producers Kelly-Jordan
Enterprises approaching a man more well known for playwriting whose first
film wasn't released, is here that is to be found in some of the most rewarding
and interesting genre films coming for the US in the seventies, even the
brazenly schlocky ones, where there's a level of unpredictability, a habit of
casting fascinating faces onscreen, and having idiosyncratic obsessions in the
dialogue and tones. Ganja & Hess
unbelievably sensual as mentioned especially when Ganja (played by the utter
beautiful Marlene Clark) appears, a
charismatic person who hides behind cold sarcasm but opens up and reveals an
individual who has suffered from her childhood and takes to her beauty, and
then vamparism, to become stronger and self-willed. The film, predating the South Korean film by many decades, inches
close to what happens in Park Chan-Wook'sThirst (2009)¸never getting to the
point of the vampirism given to Ganja giving her the freedom to lash out at the
world, but haults just before when it reaches its ending, Ganja instead a
figure who gets a happiness, smiling to the camera at the viewer, that
contrasts that film.

From http://www.ferdyonfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/GanjaHess18-e1441296058906.jpg

The film does qualify as a horror
film but one that is directly leant on its dialogue and acting. Whilst Gunn was immensely talented and witty
with his script, showing an incredible talent for instantly memorable
characters, this would've been a miserable failure is the actors weren't good.
Thankfully this wasn't the case; a huge aspect of the film's cult status could
probably lay in Duane Jones as Hess,
the central role of George A. Romero's seminal
Night of the Living Dead (1968)¸ charisma
and talent for that role transferring over to this meek and quiet individual
who is calm even when he kills for blood, something he even has to go upstairs
quietly in the attic at one point to deal with so he can drink from a jar of
fresh plasma without being seen. Matched with Clark as Ganja and you have a match made in heaven for charismatic
titular leads, but there's also great smaller roles in-between. Gunn himself as Ganja's husband is
probably the most memorable, the instigator of Hess' plight who can go from an
anecdote of Dutch language mistranslation to a suitably black humoured scene of
Hess trying to convince him not to hang himself up in one of his trees.

From http://www.notcoming.com/images/reviews/l/ganjaandhess.jpg

Technical Detail:

Alongside the history of this
film's physical care - butchered into an alternative version for original
cinema release, but the original cut on film preserved in the Museum of Modern
Art - the film has had a long road to being preserved, but the extremely
naturalism look of it is added to by its age, an additional layer of mood to
the whole work before you get to what Gunn
did specifically in his original creative intentions. Like Cassavetes¸ scenes are dictated by the dialogue, although as I'll
describe later there are moments where Gunn depicts the blurring of reality and
time that affects Hess during his life before the vampirism and after. This
means that the film has a very considered pace with adds to its contemplative
tone. Music is incredibly important to the film as well from choral hymns to a
blues song explaining the back story of the ritual dagger and a blood
worshipping cult of yore. The music naturally is a huge advantage to this
film's mood, adding so much character to it.

From http://medialifecrisis.com/media/k2/items/cache/7acce66d40ec90c2d61987b409cbf850_XL.jpg

Abstract Spectrum: Expressionist/Psychotronic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Moments in Ganja & Hess fragment its own cinematic time scale, impossible
to gauge at points how long it has been between events without even the directly
fragmented sequences being mentioned. Barring occasional glimpses of the
outside world in some scenes and an occasionally different face or two
appearing - Hess's briefly seen son at a garden party, a prostitute and her
pimp in a bar, a guest near the end that causes Ganja distress in the events
afterwards - it's a character piece set within Hess' own home where, barring
his chauffer and butler, only Ganja is there to interact with him. Even when
Hess attempts to save himself by going to a church, the building exists without
an exterior shot and is presented as a closed-in consecrated ground, adding to
its importance as part of an internal struggle within Hess, after rejecting God
originally in one scene, where he decides faith is the only cure for his
affliction.

The editing at points goes
further sometimes in altering the time frame, various realities blurred between
the African Queen and Hess' reality for example, as does a strange dream where
other characters wearing silver masks and dinner suits invite Hess to a party
we never see. The actual tone used throughout for the film, moderate and slow, adds
to its eerie mood in general, a drifting atmosphere felt throughout. It's a
very sedate movie barring the most sudden of deaths and events, detaching the
film from a continuous pace which you have to soak in thoughtfully instead.

Why it doesn't go further beyond
a "Medium" is that it's a very dramatic heavy work, a lot of grounded
dialogue which drastically contrasts with the overall tone. Where it stands in
the category it's placed however is pretty high. What stands out is still very
different and has to be viewed differently from conventional vampire stories,
the tone and Gunn's obsessions
leading to the emotions dictating the tone. This is an inherently expressionist
concept where the film, while completely dependent on its performances and
script, still maintains its events being dictated by the characters' internal
worlds rather than plotting around them. Particularly when it reaches it
ending, when a figures rises as if reborn in nakedness from a body of water, the
film also has phantasmagoric aspects throughout its narrative, Gunn not sacrificing the horror template
he used for his ideas but instead, rather than the stereotypes of the Bela Lugosi vampire, using the material
to create images like those mentioned in the review that are more idiosyncratic
for what he desired. This means that the foot between its exploitation origins
and its artistic intentions - between the psychotronic and expressionist tags
I've used - is not that problematic, only so in the case of the original distributors
who wanted a straight forward Blaxploitation vampire film. As it stands, the
more quieter and pragmatic version Gunn
actually made is more suitably macabre and unconventional as a result.

From http://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/602-e1422024607433.jpg

Personal Opinion:

One of the best physical media premieres
in 2015, released on Blu-Ray and DVD in the UK by Eureka!, this was a difficult film for me to work with originally
because of its methodical tone and lack of a direct narrative even in
comparison to other unconventional vampire films (i.e. Jean Rollin's surrealistic ones). As I've watched it more, Ganja & Hess has a rich mood to it
that has won me over. It feels utterly crass to merely view the film as a take
of the mythos by an African-American director because, as Bill Gunn once wrote with grievance in a response included in the
Blu-Ray booklet, if he was a white European art house director he felt he
might've gotten more praise rather than what he felt was bigotry from white
American film critics at the time of its release. Thankfully the film was
reappraised without unfair bias, and while it does tackle subjects that deal
with cultural heritage, it also offers for me one of the earliest reinterpretations
of a vampire as a normal, drug afflicted individual, cursed with an insatiable
lust for blood rather than a supernatural creature, not a foreign nobleman from
a gothic country but a person off the street who has to deal with their
newfound undead life with the complications of an ordinary person.

Again, only Abel Ferrera'sThe Addiction
so far in the films of the sub-genre I've seen has the exact same mentality of
a drama based around the subject that, unlike Jim Jarmusch'sOnly Lovers
Left Alive (2013), is still as much a horror film in tone and content but
through a reflective bent. Sadly the director's filmography including Ganja & Hess only consisted of
three films, and yet until his death in 1989 he did contribute many plays, screenplays
and two novels, immediacy leading me to wonder if any of them are at hand
somewhere if I looked for them based on my admiration of this film.

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"I could go on for hours with more examples. The list is endless. You probably never gave it a thought, but all great films, without exception, contain an important element of no reason. And you know why? Because life itself is filled with no reason." - Rubber (2010)

About Me

I am 28 years old and hail from England. For the last few years I have been a growing fan of cinema and have decided to take the next step into blogging about it and any other tangents that about the things I'm interested in I get onto.